The Mass Effect saga has expanded far beyond its core trilogy of video games. Two mobile games, four novels, several comic min-series, and anime film fill in details of the rich sci-fi setting beyond the exploits of Command Shepard. The next piece of canon to join that list will be Mass Effect: Foundation, an ongoing comic series (the franchise's first comic to exceed "mini-series" status) penned by Mass Effect writer Mac Walters and published by Dark Horse.

Walters, who partially wrote Mass Effect 2 and served as story lead for Mass Effect 3, has worked on some of the franchise's mini-series in the past. Foundation will be his most ambitious comic project to date, spanning twelve issues on a monthly release schedule. With Mass Effect 3 on shelves and its line-up of DLC coming to a close, Walters has been able to fully commit to the comic.

Foundation will feature an original heroine not seen before in the Mass Effect saga, but many elements of its story are designed to expand established events that fans may be curious about. "Rather than going into an area where we tell brand-new stories in a universe that people know already, maybe we could find ways of fleshing out some of the stories that we've heard hints of already," Walters explains. "At a high level, that's where we thought about going with Foundations, and that's where we went with it."

Previous Mass Effect comics have focused on the supporting cast of the series, due to the difficulty of representing a canonical Shepard without invalidating players' choices in the games. "The problem is you can't even go back to a young Shepard," Walters notes, "because it could be male, female; you don't know the background..." Foundation continues that approach by setting its story about from the main events of the trilogy. While some crossover is inevitable - Walters confirmed that there will be "some connections" with the upcoming Citadel DLC - the focus will be on telling these side characters' stories. "People can look forward to some of their favorites showing up again," Walters teased, "maybe even characters that haven't been touched on before."

There isn't much to go off of yet, but the Mass Effect universe is certainly ripe with untold stories. There have been no confirmed reports of elcor battletanks or hanar Spectres in Foundation's plotline, but we can always hope.

hazabaza1:Oh god, retarded wolverine claws.But yeah I read the comic that came with the ME3 collector's edition. If this has any similar quality to its writing/pacing/artwork it's going to be bad. Very bad.

I concur. That comic was straight up bad. The writing I think was the worst part, cringe-worthy really.

Soviet Heavy:Mass Effect tie in material has been pretty awful so far. I'm not getting my hopes up for this one to break the mold.

While I have not read a lot of the novels or side comics I thought a lot of people liked Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect book tie-ins. I think for the next Mass Effect game they should get Neil Gaiman to be lead writer on the project.

Soviet Heavy:Mass Effect tie in material has been pretty awful so far. I'm not getting my hopes up for this one to break the mold.

While I have not read a lot of the novels or side comics I thought a lot of people liked Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect book tie-ins. I think for the next Mass Effect game they should get Neil Gaiman to be lead writer on the project.

Drew Karpyshin is not a good novelist. He can write a good game script, but translating that to a book is not easy. His Revan novel and his Darth Bane trilogy were terrible. That doesn't bode well for his other books.

hazabaza1:Oh god, retarded wolverine claws.But yeah I read the comic that came with the ME3 collector's edition. If this has any similar quality to its writing/pacing/artwork it's going to be bad. Very bad.

I concur. That comic was straight up bad. The writing I think was the worst part, cringe-worthy really.

do you mean the one with Aria? Invasion?, Im going to have to ask what so so bad about it? I dont remember it being awful

also what was wrong with the artwork? I actually thourght it was pretty good, everything looked more or less spot on....now the artwork for Talis comic "homeworlds" was...lacking somewhat because the artist decided to do their own thing rather trying and meticlasly stick to what turians and quarians look like

I'm not really interested because I feel "extra materiel" is basically exploitation...

hazabaza1:Oh god, retarded wolverine claws.But yeah I read the comic that came with the ME3 collector's edition. If this has any similar quality to its writing/pacing/artwork it's going to be bad. Very bad.

Yeah, I think that's the one.I dunno, the artwork was decent, but very... inconsistent. It also had a lot of the ninja sort of stuff that everyone hated in ME3 (how the fuck do you slit a krogan's throat with a knife seriously)

Plus, the writing in the comic... oh the writing. It was worse than some of ME3's worst bits, and that's saying a fair bit, this coming from someone who likes Mass Effect.

Oh, fuck you Mac Walters! You couldn't write your way out of a Sao Paulo bathroom stall!

Invasion read like crap, and Mass Effect 3 had the most retarded writing to ever disgrace the series, not counting Deception.

I highly doubt this new comic is going to be anything other than aggressively mediocre, late nineties trash. And how do you "expand" the Mass Effect universe? If it expanded anymore, it'd collapse under it's own weight and form a singularity of self contradiction and contrivance.

yeah I DID notice that at the time and thought "bullshit" that kind of thing shouldn't work with a Krogan (and now I sound like a lore natzi BUT IT SHOULDNT DAMMIT!)

also what do you mean by inconsistent? I know I'm being a pain in the ass asking all thease things but as somone who's tryig their own hand at drawing I want to know

Plus, the writing in the comic... oh the writing. It was worse than some of ME3's worst bits, and that's saying a fair bit, this coming from someone who likes Mass Effect.

I should re-read...if I can be bothered

I dunno how to define it really. Things just ended up looking... different than they were before. Angles looked odd and that whole thing it had of having bits of a scene pop out of the frame it was supposed to be in was doing it no favours.

If you can't be bothered to re-read it I don't blame you, but from memory the writing was just very cheesy melodramatic stuff. Not bad in principle, but in a big moment in the Mass Effect lore, it was a fair bit out of place.

I can't stop laughing at that teaser image. In my head there's a little trailer playing along the lines of: (Voice over) "Presenting; Knife Fights!...IN SPAAAAAAAACE!" At this point the camera jumps zooms in and out of the above image very fast for about ten seconds while the Star Trek duel music plays. And then it ends with a "Coming soon"

But anyway. I haven't got around to reading the comics (though I really want to read that Illusive Man one) so all I have to go on are the first three novels (which I liked very much) and that comic which came with the ME2 CE (which was fine). So meh, I might give it a look once it goes cheap in TPB form. Could be good.

Once again, Ending was one of manymanymanymanymany problems with the entire series.

yes yes I know

but still aside from the ending I think ME3 was still good, and even then its stilly to blame one writer for everything

now unless he did write that invasion comic (and the other comics) and people are using that to gauge his apparent bad writing skills...ok

you know what? I think mabye I should just stay out of this thread.....its happening again

Hey I've got nothing against you, but there is no way I can conceivably disagree with you more. The ending is comparable to to a star wars prequel. Lots of glits and glam but totally lacking in substance or coherence, and it all happened under Mac Walter's watch.

Let's remember here: Something like the ending cannot slip past him unnoticed. Even if he didn't come up with it, he had to have given it the okay at some point.

Soviet Heavy:Mass Effect tie in material has been pretty awful so far. I'm not getting my hopes up for this one to break the mold.

While I have not read a lot of the novels or side comics I thought a lot of people liked Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect book tie-ins. I think for the next Mass Effect game they should get Neil Gaiman to be lead writer on the project.

Drew Karpyshin is not a good novelist. He can write a good game script, but translating that to a book is not easy. His Revan novel and his Darth Bane trilogy were terrible. That doesn't bode well for his other books.

Isn't writing a book or a script kinda the same thing in a way? The person writing it still has to explain the settings, plot, characters and side-characters of the story. The only real difference that I see is that an author has to describe the surroundings and what a character is doing more in depth. Is that why people disliked his novels?

Hey I've got nothing against you, but there is no way I can conceivably disagree with you more. The ending is comparable to to a star wars prequel. Lots of glits and glam but totally lacking in substance or coherence, and it all happened under Mac Walter's watch.

Let's remember here: Something like the ending cannot slip past him unnoticed. Even if he didn't come up with it, he had to have given it the okay at some point.

I thought Casey hudson was responsible for the ending?

eather way they fucked up I guess

*sigh* I dont talk about mass effect anymore for obvious reasons

Bat Vader:] Isn't writing a book or a script kinda the same thing in a way? The person writing it still has to explain the settings, plot, characters and side-characters of the story. The only real difference that I see is that an author has to describe the surroundings and what a character is doing more in depth. Is that why people disliked his novels?

I dont think so.. prose (is that hats its called) is different and a hard thing to do

Hey I've got nothing against you, but there is no way I can conceivably disagree with you more. The ending is comparable to to a star wars prequel. Lots of glits and glam but totally lacking in substance or coherence, and it all happened under Mac Walter's watch.

Let's remember here: Something like the ending cannot slip past him unnoticed. Even if he didn't come up with it, he had to have given it the okay at some point.

I thought Casey hudson was responsible for the ending?

eather way they fucked up I guess

*sigh* I dont talk about mass effect anymore for obvious reasons

Bat Vader:] Isn't writing a book or a script kinda the same thing in a way? The person writing it still has to explain the settings, plot, characters and side-characters of the story. The only real difference that I see is that an author has to describe the surroundings and what a character is doing more in depth. Is that why people disliked his novels?

I dont think so.. prose (is that hats its called) is different and a hard thing to do

Indeed, prose is hard to get right. With a script, you also have a director to frame the scenes. With a book, the author and editor are the only ones with input on how described a scene is.

DVS BSTrD:]Oh I don't hate him. I'm just sick of them trying to expand the story after the series has concluded. Just let it die, please?

as far as i'm concerned mass effect is the next star wars

expanded universe up the ass!

It would have been like starwars.

If star wars had ended with a magic space platypus showing up and explaining to luke that the sith were just an instrument of its will to save the galaxy from other potential evil people, and then gave him a red pill, a blue pill and a green pill to pick if it killed all ze evil people in the galaxy, made luke a sith to control all the other sith, or used its uber space magic to make everyone everywhere sithjedi.

Poor Bioware, it's a shame you wrote what could have been a golden goose that kept laying golden eggs into a hole with your 3 coloured explosions.

A game where the reapers were just -defeated- due to an alliance between all races would have been adaptable for a continuation of the series... but now the three endings mean that either the Reapers are replaced with Shepards who will do whatever Shepard did alignment wise, everyone is some freaky robot-organic thing that was never really explained or all robots are dead - for now. Every one of those has decimated the political landscape in some way or another and means writing a 'what happened after' story of any sort just forced a particular canon.

Couldn't do what you did with Dragon Age II story wise in relation to Dragon Age: Origins and just have a new character existing in the aftermath of Shepard's choices? No, because the end game for Mass Effect was TOO polarising.

I want to care, I really do. Heck, I am even looking forward to the Citadel DLC (let's hope it isn't crap). But this? Sadly, I can't be bothered to care anymore. It's like I'm flushing ME3 out of my system, and all I have time for are the original trilogy and a few fan initiatives.

Even more sad, considering ME is STILL my quintessential game for 360 (and still the reason I have my XBOX at all).

You're half right. Walters and Hudson pretty much locked themselves in a room after ME3's story was leaked to write a new ending, with absolutely no input from any of the other writers and/or editors.

OT: I can't say I'm looking forward to this. Of the comics I've read, they were meh at best, writing and art wise. From what I saw, the works were getting progressively worse, from the four armed alien in the short Vega comic to the guy who did the art for Homeworlds (the Garrus issue) telling me pretty much that he didn't care for the game's cannon and to fuck off.

soren7550:]You're half right. Walters and Hudson pretty much locked themselves in a room after ME3's story was leaked to write a new ending, with absolutely no input from any of the other writers and/or editors.

and thats what they came up with? you know that doesnt even sound like a time/money issue, that sounds like a "THIS IS WHAT I THINK DEEP AND ARTY IS" geeeeaaarrrrrgh no I'm not going to get into this

OT: I can't say I'm looking forward to this. Of the comics I've read, they were meh at best, writing and art wise. From what I saw, the works were getting progressively worse, from the four armed alien in the short Vega comic to the guy who did the art for Homeworlds (the Garrus issue) telling me pretty much that he didn't care for the game's cannon and to fuck off.